her earl the flutters in her belly would settle. What she needed to bear in mind was that the opinions of daughters and mammas did not matter so much in the end. If Fencroft approved of her all would be well.
If she approved of him, all would be very well. For all that she struggled against Grandfather’s insistence that she become a countess, she did want to give him what he wanted most, if it was within her power to do so.
This man she owed everything to had been horribly betrayed by one granddaughter. If she could ease his grief over it, she would. Of course, she had yet to meet Fencroft, so she could not say for certain.
But she would try. She did know that much.
“Come, let me introduce you,” Her Grace declared.
Grandfather’s arm fell away from under her hand.
She prayed that her lips formed a bright and twittering smile.
Grandfather walked toward a group of gentlemen engrossed in lively conversation across the room. She was utterly on her own.
Even though the duchess was leading her to a gathering of women near the garden doors, sanctuary felt miles away.
* * *
Heath strode into the grand entry hall and handed off his black coat, hat and gloves to the servant standing in waiting.
“Thank you, my good man,” he said with a nod.
The fellow returned the nod but did not speak. Now that Heath was Fencroft, life was more formal. He’d been set on some blamed pedestal that kept some people at arm’s length. At the same time other people who had barely spared him a glance in the past attached themselves to him.
His mind returned to the woman in the pond. She didn’t know who he was and so she showed him no deference. It was almost as though he was simply Heath Cavill, second son again. What would he not give to be strolling on a moonlit path at the estate in Derbyshire instead of traversing these marble floors?
What would he not give to hear his brother’s congenial laugh one more time? But death changed everything and so he would not.
By custom, he ought not to be here. He was still in mourning. But in mourning for Oliver. His brother would encourage him to laugh and enjoy his first meeting with Madeline Macooish.
It wasn’t likely that any of the women here would object to his break with tradition. They would think he was looking for a wife, which, in fact, he was.
Going into the ballroom, he felt the gazes of a dozen blushing girls settle upon him. Then again, not him so much as the Earl of Fencroft.
Somewhere among this assembly was a vivacious, blue-eyed heiress who assumed she was about to meet a fellow who was as fun-seeking as she was.
One of the ladies milling about this room was willing to give up life as she had known it for the honor of being called countess.
He rather thought she might regret that choice. Chances were the lady did not understand the restrictions that would be put upon her. Not by him so much as by the rules of polite society.
Other American ladies had made the same choice and later regretted it. The gossip sheet was full of their marital misery.
He would do his best to see that his wife did not suffer by giving herself and her fortune to him, but there was only so much he could do in the face of social opinion.
There was also the matter of surrendering his heart to a wife. He’d done it once, given it quite freely to a fiancée who only pretended to cherish it. He did not wish to go through that despair again.
Which, it suddenly occurred to him, made a marriage by arrangement appealing. While he would be committed to his wife in being faithful to her and providing her with a comfortable life, she would not expect him to invest his heart in the agreement. There was every possibility that she would not want to invest hers, either.
A marriage of convenience suddenly seemed a fine thing.
“Lord Fencroft!” For a split second, Heath expected to hear his brother’s voice answering the greeting of the matron chugging toward him, her freshly presented daughter in tow.
“Lady Meyers,” he answered, cringing at the gravity in his tone while recalling the genuine pleasure Oliver took in making the acquaintance of a debutante. It was the job of an earl to make people feel welcome in his presence. If the half-panicked expression on the girl’s face was anything to go by, he was failing miserably. “What a pleasure it is to see you tonight. I hope you are well.”
“Quite well.” For some reason her smile sagged. “As well as a mother can be when her son goes into trade, I suppose. But here, please meet my daughter, Emily. I’m sure she will find a match to make us all proud.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lady Emily.” He bowed over her hand, certain he felt the heat of her blush through her glove.
“As it turns out, Emily has one dance free on her card—the next one in fact. It would be a lovely chance for you two young people to get to know one another.”
The right and decent thing to do would be to refuse the dance given that he was here to meet the woman he would marry.
But he’d been neatly boxed in by the matron. Unless he wanted to insult them both, there was nothing to do but graciously agree, or appear to at any rate.
He danced with Lady Emily, half embarrassed by the furious blush reddening her cheeks through every step of the waltz. The last note had barely sounded before she nodded, turned and fled from the dance floor.
Emily’s mother might think her daughter ready for marriage, but the person Heath saw was still a child.
While the girl hurried over to half a dozen young ladies whose heads were bent in apparent gossip, Heath scanned the room for a blond, elegantly coiffed head. He’d learned from Oliver that Miss Macooish was a confident sort, a lady whom he imagined would dance until her feet blistered.
Still in mourning for his brother, Heath would have been excused from dancing, certainly. But mothers continued to come forward asking to put his name on their daughter’s dance card.
While he had no intention of waltzing until his toes blistered, he would dance to honor his brother. Sitting in a dark corner would not serve that purpose. If Oliver were looking down upon the gathering, he did not want him to be frowning.
Debutante after debutante came into his arms, every one of them sweet and pink-cheeked. He could barely tell one from another. A proper earl, like Oliver, in fact, would know every name, what rank and family they came from.
Once or twice, through the whirl of dancers he caught a brief glimpse of a red-haired lady on the arm of an older gentleman.
She was not the one he was looking for. Somewhere there was supposed to be an older man, James Macooish, with his lively blonde granddaughter on his arm.
He would ask his hostess who she was, but how would he explain his interest in her? The arrangement with Macooish was private and he would prefer to keep it so.
He did not see anyone matching Miss Macooish’s description.
Ah,
